some of you will remember me from before. i have seizures triggered by flicker, and the posters here have for a long time been solving my problems.

i have everything possible turned off in my browser. graphics. colors. fonts. everything.

except flash.

while the forum was down i got a new computer. XP. for many strange reasons i don't have complete backups. went to the forum to look up how to turn off flash and prevent it from redownloading and of course no forum.

so would someone please tell me how to prevent flash? i think it involved changing a security certificate but am not about to do that without very clear instructions. also i can't figure out where to uninstall flash.

would very much appreciate your help. didn't realize how much i depended on your guys until you weren't there.

Hi Annie

I found a flash uninstaller program and to make it easier to find I put it up on my site

http://www.thunder65.com/annie/unins...ash_player.exe

Make sure nothing is running when you use the installer (only explorer.exe should be running). Might want to boot into safe mode then run the uninstaller.

Also there is a registry fix to implement (not sure if it's needed after the uninstaller is done) that I'll post if the uninstaller doesn't do everything you need it to do

where would i be without you?

i don't do the registry. no matter what i do not make changes in the registry.

i just tried right clicking on a flash at yahoo and discovered some settings. i set the amount of space flash is allowed to use on my hard drive (WHAT!!!! just precisely how did it get permission to do this?) to zero and that seems to have killed it. but i do remember that it was able before to override my settings, so i better go get your uninstaller.

will let you know.

in xp you should be able to just disable the addon for flash.

Tools > Manage Add-ons > Click show add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer from the drop down box > Highlight Shockwave Flash Object > click the disable radio button on the bottom > click ok.

Changes take effect next time you open IE.

followed your excellent directions i hope. closed all IE, reopened, there i was, merryly clicking around in yahoo news and admiring the empty boxes where flash used to be while typing a reply to you in another window. and the computer froze. mouse didn't work. keyboard didn't work. ctrl alt del didn't work. finally turned off at switch, waited 20 sec, rebooted. did not go back to yahoo.

i did get a yellow bubble message at yahoo that i didn't notice until it left because i was typing in another window. did it want something?

now i am fine, but i haven't been to any site but here.

what did i do wrong?

i was really lost without being able to ask you for help. XP is not 98, and i still think in DOS. but XP does run my favorite DOS program, so not all is bad.

Annie, it could just be that yahoo choked and your reboot may have cured it.

In Tools > IE Options > Advanced > Browsing > uncheck install on demand IE and other. That should cause IE to ignore what the site thinks you need to view it.

I'm using Zone Alarmn 6 now, and I know when I have ad blocking or mobile control settings to high in ZA, surfing is a pita on some sites, because they just don't want to function at all unless you give them carte blanche to control your viewing. I refuse to go to those sites.

I would give yahoo another try though. You never know.

ps - yeah it could have. Alot of times when I lockup there is a dialog box in the background that was the cause of the freeze up.

You can go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer and browse through the logs for errors that happened around that time. Not foolproof, because the information is limited, but it's sometimes helpful.

this didn't quote the quote, it used to.

in any event, that event viewer is fun. didn't know about it before.

there are two yellow flags around the time the lockup happened. both of them say that memory was being used and not freed up. i assume that this is when i turned off the computer at its on off switch.

nothing before the flags said anything to me.

after the flags they are trying to run setup manager. no that is not it either, that is the next morning. the flag is the last thing i get while shutting down. two nights in a row. i think i shut down all programs before i shut down, maybe i need to give them more time.

so there is a lot more information there than i understand. but nothing that jumps out at me.

uncheck install on demand IE was already unchecked, unchecked other.

went back to yahoo news and poked around, including the link that locked me last night. no problem. so either one of the changes i just made solved it or yahoo solved it or the internet pixies solved it.

i have all sorts of stuff turned off. colors, fonts, animations, pictures. some sites don't have alt tags and i can't manage them at all. i tend to write them pointed letters. sometimes people write me back thanking me.

someday i will get the vbulletin people to size their alt tags, which is my main problem currently with this forum and any forum that uses the vbulletin software..

my experience has been that if a site is so poorly designed that i can't use it it doesn't have any useful content anyway.

some years ago the about.com page on writing html pages for persons with disabilities had a flash ad on it. i actually got it taken off.

so you seem to have solved my problems of the moment and made internet surfing a much safer experience for me. i very much appreciate your help.

locked myself up again.

was on forum feedback and clicked on one of your links. instant lockup. did not open another window, and i think that is what is happening. IE is trying to open another window and winds up in a loop.

i did not knowingly turn this off but seem to have.

help!